Exclusive: Poll signals strengthening support for Biden over Trump in
three Midwest battleground states
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[April 23, 2020]
By Chris Kahn
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republican President
Donald Trump trails Democrat Joe Biden among registered voters in three
Midwestern battleground states that he narrowly carried in 2016 and are
seen as crucial to winning November's election, according to an Ipsos
public opinion poll conducted exclusively for Reuters.
The poll, which ran from April 15-20 in Michigan, Wisconsin and
Pennsylvania, showed 45% of registered voters said they would support
Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, while 39% said they would
support Trump.
It also found that Biden, vice president under Trump's predecessor
Barack Obama, has an advantage of 3 percentage points among registered
voters in Wisconsin, 6 points in Pennsylvania and 8 points in Michigan.
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The Ipsos poll shows Biden has maintained or slightly improved his lead
over Trump in those states over the past few months, even though his
campaign and the presidential primaries have been sidelined by the
coronavirus pandemic. The United States has the most confirmed cases and
deaths in the world with at least 821,000 people infected and at least
46,000 deaths.
Biden's advantage in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania over Trump
averaged 3 to 4 percentage points in February and March, according to an
aggregation of survey results by Real Clear Politics.
That would also suggest that Trump has not experienced an uptick in
support in the Midwest, even though he has commanded the public’s
attention at the helm of the federal response to the coronavirus crisis
and sought to cast himself as a “wartime president” fighting an
invisible enemy.
A separate Reuters/Ipsos poll found on Tuesday that Biden has an 8-point
advantage over Trump nationally, as support for him rose nationally in
each of the last three weeks while disapproval of Trump's response to
the pandemic grew.
To be sure, anything can happen with several months to go before the
Nov. 3 general election. State polls in 2016 showed Democrat Hillary
Clinton enjoyed wide leads over Trump early in the election cycle in
those same Midwestern states before she lost them to Trump on Election
Day, all of them by less than a percentage point.
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Democratic U.S. presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe
Biden argues with a worker about his gun control policies during a
Biden campaign stop at the FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) Mack
Assembly plant in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., March 10, 2020.
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
Trump is still a little more popular in the Midwestern battlegrounds
than he is nationally, in part thanks to his appeal to some
blue-collar white voters.
Yet the number of registered voters who disapprove of Trump
outnumber those who approve of him in all three states, the Ipsos
poll found. In Wisconsin, 47% of registered voters approve of the
president, while 53% disapprove. In Pennsylvania, 48% approve and
52% disapprove, and in Michigan, 44% approve and 56% disapprove.
The coronavirus is by far the top concern for residents of all three
states. More than 70,000 people have tested positive in all three
states combined and 4,500 have died.
The poll found that 48% of people living in those states said the
coronavirus was the most important problem facing their community,
which is more than the number of people who cited other top concerns
such as the economy (15%), healthcare (12%) or immigration (2%).
When asked what they thought about the U.S. government’s response to
the virus, about 47% of registered voters in all three states said
they approved of the way Trump was dealing with it - lower than 67%
approval of their state governor's handling of the crisis.
Neither Biden nor Trump appear to have much of an advantage when it
comes to public perceptions of who is better suited to lead the
country out of the pandemic and the economic damage that has ensued.
About 50% of registered voters said they thought Biden was better
for the job, while 47% said it was Trump.
The Ipsos poll was conducted online with 612 registered voters in
Michigan, 578 in Pennsylvania and 645 in Wisconsin. It has a margin
of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for the entire region
and 5 points for each state.
(Reporting by Chris Kahn, Editing by Soyoung Kim and Grant McCool)
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